The inventive concept relates to semiconductor devices and the manufacturing of the same. More particularly, the inventive concept relates to an article comprising a semiconductor wafer having scribe lanes and to a method of manufacturing semiconductor devices that includes sawing a semiconductor wafer along the scribe lanes.
The fabricating of semiconductor devices may generally include the fabricating of chips on a semiconductor wafer, an electrical die sorting (EDS) test on the chips fabricated on the semiconductor wafer to determine which of the chips meet certain quality standards, and a dicing process of separating the wafer into individual chips. The dicing process may be carried out by blade or laser “sawing” depending on a state or the thickness of the wafer. When the wafer is cut by a blade or laser during a sawing process, a problem occurs in that silicon particles freed from the wafer may become a contaminant.
For example, such particles can contaminate a bonding pad surface of one or more of the chips. In this case, a bonding process is not performed normally, and the yield of the chips is reduced. Because particles present on the surface of the chip damage a passivation layer that is a final protection layer of the chip, the reliability of a semiconductor package that includes such a damaged passivation layer is reduced.